The feminist messages behind Sleater-Kinney’s ‘Modern Girl’
When Sleater-Kinney started hashing out their first songs, the entire alternative movement was in a state of change. Although rock had normally been dominated by a strong male presence in nearly every decade, the 1990s brought strong female voices like Courtney Love and Alanis Morrissette, each bringing their own perspective on the industry. Whereas most would shroud their messages metaphorically, Sleater-Kinney tended to cut to the chase.
Throughout the band’s tenure, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker were about shredding down any of the barriers in rock music, knocking down all the preconceptions of what female rockstars were supposed to be on albums like their self-titled debut and Dig Me Out. After over a decade of subverting the expectations of rock, The Woods brought one of their most interesting songs on ‘Modern Girl’.
Although Brownstein’s lyrics are fairly simplistic if taken as pure poetry, the music behind her tells much more of the story. On the surface, this seems like an average song about the more superficial images of what women were “supposed” to be, as Brownstein and Tucker sing about being happy, making her a modern girl.
Underneath it all, though, the band are unleashing hell in the background, giving the impression that not all things are what they seem as Janet Weiss’s pummeling drums assault the eardrums. As the song plays out, Brownstein is rallying against what’s expected from women in the modern age, talking about the anger she holds inside of her having to conform to anyone’s supposed stereotype of what she’s meant to be.
Happiness is only one facet of the “modern girl” trope, as Brownstein namechecks the more shallow sides of life in lines like “my baby loves me, I’m so hungry/hunger makes me a modern girl”. From Brownstein’s mouth, this is a seething critique of how women’s body images tend to define them in the eyes of society far more than anything worthwhile. Then again, it could easily be about the hunger to break out of the common bubble of stereotypes, as evidenced by Brownstein naming her book after the lyric years later.
The most telling line in the song comes in the chorus, as Brownstein talks about her whole life being part of a sunny day. While the pastiche of a “modern girl” might seem like living on a sunny day until the end of time, it’s all just empty images, as if this symbol for society has to constantly remind herself that she’s having a good time despite being dictated by the unknown forces around her.
The line about her life always being a sunny day may have been all the more prophetic in 2005, pointing to the obsessive nature that comes with social media stardom and the constant need to broadcast the sunny side of life. Despite the heavy subject matter, this remains one of the more accessible songs from Sleater-Kinney from this era, featuring nice attention to melody and knowing when to blow out the listeners’ eardrums when needed.
Compared to the usual songwriters that can tell a story with an acoustic guitar, some of these lines sound like the listener has been placed in the room with Brownstein as she refuses to be kept down by what others think she should do. In an industry that normally turns its back on female celebrities once they get past a certain age, Brownstein was looking to tear down the walls of sexist practices and would use their picture-perfect model of a “modern girl” to do it.
